Mapping Prescient’s PTX-200 Progress

Feb 19, 2020 AEDT

Team Kalkine

Known for developing breakthrough personalised medicines using an approach to address specific mutations that drive cancer, thereby providing resistance to front line chemotherapy, Prescient Therapeutics Limited (ASX:PTX) has been gaining industry’s attention for the recent advancements in its clinical trials, backed by a robust targeted therapy portfolio of product with its two lead drug candidates, PTX-100 and PTX 200.

Remarkable Clinical Development of Prescient’s PTX-200

PTX-200 is an effective small molecule that is positioned as a novel PH domain inhibitor incorporating a novel mechanism of action that explicitly inhibits a vital survival pathway known as Akt.

Akt is a growth switch found in cancer cells, that plays a crucial role in the progression of several solid tumours including breast and ovarian cancer as well as hematologic tumours including leukemia, while also conferring resistance to many frontline therapies.

Source: Company Presentation

PTX-200 is being investigated under three ongoing clinical trials including ovarian cancer, breast cancer and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

PTX-200 in Recurrent or Persistent Platinum Resistant Ovarian Cancer

With a very poor clinical outcome, ovarian cancer is considered one of the most commonly occurring cancers in women. The patients often regarded as platinum resistant, since the majority of patients relapse & become resistant to the front-line platinum-based chemotherapy, such as carboplatin. In addition, abnormally high Akt further contributes to this resistance. Given these facts, the study has been designed to inhibit Akt to re-sensitise platinum resistant patients towards platinum therapies, in turn, effectively reversing and overcoming tumour resistance to chemotherapy.

Triple negative and ER+/HER2 negative breast cancer treatment is classified by treatment with significant unmet clinical need, as per the GlobalData 2016.

HER2- negative is the most locally advanced breast cancer and remains underserved by new drugs, thereby drawing a huge opportunity in the market which is expected to reach a significant $10.6 billion by 2025.

Source: Company Presentation

Encouraging data from the Phase 2a trial of PTX-200

Phase 2a trial of PTX-200 conducted in 11 women with HER2- negative breast cancer wherein 10 of 11 patients were evaluable for the study. The primary efficacy endpoint of pathologic response in the breast was determined at the time of surgery, with all ten patients showing response to the treatment, revealing an overall 91% response rate across all 11 patients. Complete eradication of disease or Pathologic complete response (pCR) was observed in 2 patients while pathological partial responses (PR) were observed in 8 patients.

PTX-200 in Acute Myeloid Leukemia

PTX-200 act as a targeted therapy under this study focusing on the “phenotype, not the genotype” in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) mutations, synergising with cytarabine in AML cells complementing a “backbone” of traditional chemotherapy.

Phase 1 trial conducted under the guidance of Jeffrey E Lancet, MD, at Moffitt Cancer Center has previously been completed successfully wherein PTX-200 was used as a monotherapy in advanced hematologic malignancies, mainly AML that revealed promising data.

Promising results in PTX-200 Phase 1b trial

Given the promising results observed in PTX-200 Phase 1b trial in patients with relapsed and refractory (AML) with 3 of 15 subjects revealing total eradication of the disease in this difficult to treat patient population, Prescient recently announced an expansion of the study with an aim to identify the optimal PTX-200 dosing schedule with chemotherapy, and minimising the side effects based on these findings.

To summarise, Prescient with its robust pipeline of clinical programs leads the key developments being made in precision oncology globally and pledge to transform cancer treatment.

PTX was trading at $0.054 up by 8% on 19 February 2020 (AEDT: 1:55PM).

Disclaimer

This website is a service of Kalkine Media Pty. Ltd. A.C.N. 629 651 672. The website has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to be used as a complete source of information on any particular company. The above article is sponsored but NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold the stock of the company (or companies) under discussion. We are neither licensed nor qualified to provide investment advice through this platform.

All pictures are copyright to their respective owner(s).Kalkinemedia.com does not claim ownership of any of the pictures displayed on this website unless stated otherwise. Some of the images used on this website are taken from the web and are believed to be in public domain. We have used reasonable efforts to accredit the source (public domain/CC0 status) to where it was found and indicated it below the image.